'We Could've Asked ChatGPT': UK Students Fight Back Over Course Taught By AI

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:

James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at the University of Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers. But after a term of AI-generated slides being read, at times, by an AI voiceover, James said he had lost faith in the programme and the people running it, worrying he had 'used up two years' of his life on a course that had been done 'in the cheapest way possible'.

'If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we're being taught by an AI,' said James during a confrontation with his lecturer recorded as a part of the course in October 2024. James and other students confronted university officials multiple times about the AI materials. But the university appears to still be using AI-generated materials to teach the course. This year, the university uploaded a policy statement to the course website appearing to justify the use of AI, laying out 'a framework for academic professionals leveraging AI automation' in scholarly work and teaching...

For students, AI teaching appears to be less transformative than it is demoralising. In the US, students post negative online reviews about professors who use AI. In the UK, undergraduates have taken to Reddit to complain about their lecturers copying and pasting feedback from ChatGPT or using AI-generated images in courses.

'I feel like a bit of my life was stolen,' James told the Guardian (which also quotes an unidentified student saying they felt 'robbed of knowledge and enjoyment'.) But the article also points out that a survey last year of 3,287 higher-education teaching staff by edtech firm Jisc found that nearly a quarter were using AI tools in their teaching.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.